Sudan_mother's story (617 + 200) ***

Asunta's seven month old daughter will probably live. Her mother recently brought her to Lokichoggio, in Kenya, near the Sudan border. They are being cared for by the New Sudan Council of Churches. The mother and child have been examined. They are not ill - just malnourished.

A displaced mother's story

By Nicholas Kerr*

Asunta is desperate to get into Kakuma refugee camp. Food is rationed there, but at least her seven children will get some food regularly.

I met her in Lokichoggio, in Kenya, near the border with Sudan. She is waiting to be processed before she can go to the camp.

"Once I am registered as a refugee we will get help," she said. "We will get regular food. I am longing for the day when I will get a ration card. We may find some peace there."

Asunta wants the whole world to know her story. "It is my story I'm telling you," she said. "But thousands of southern Sudanese women could tell you the same story."

She has been displaced many times over the last 10 years. She said she has walked hundreds of miles - from Sudan to Ethiopia and back and from place to place in southern Sudan.

"I am here in Kenya because of disease, hunger, all caused by the war. We have no seeds for agriculture. We have no tools for agriculture any more. There are no hospitals or schools in our area.

"It has taken me just over two months to get here, me and my seven children. My milk has dried up because we have not enough food. My little baby is starving and may die. My husband has now been killed in the fighting. He was a wonderful man, gifted by God. But now he is gone.

"We have to walk carefully at night. If the government forces see a group of people walking towards Kenya, they bomb us. This is a most fearful thing for a mother.

"I want to ask you some questions. I was in Yei. There was bombing. I went to look for shelter. My sister in law went to a different bomb shelter with her children. The bomb shelter was hit and they were all buried alive. I want to ask you: Is this good, what the Arabs are doing? Why do white people not come to our aid? If white people in Israel die, all the world objects. Why do you not care about the millions of black Africans who are dying?

"Look at my child. She is hungry and her stomach is swollen from hunger. Is that good?

"We Christians of the south need the help of Australian Christians. Even if you refuse to give us anything, please listen to us. Please listen to our story and share our suffering. Please pray for us."

Asunta is 28. "But I feel I have grown very old because of the suffering." She said.

"When we were coming back from refugee camp in Ethiopia we were bombed - we, the refugees. The women and children were especially targeted. There's a saying, 'If you want to pinch your enemy, kill his women and children. If you kill him, he won't feel it. If you kill them, he will feel it deeply.'

"We couldn't even hide in the bushes. We were bombed wherever we went. My three brothers were killed. I jumped over their bodies and fled."

She told me how she had taken her children to various places in the south. She left each place to save the children from the bombs.

"I can no longer relax, mentally or physically. I have seen people become crazy because of the trauma and the fear. I am scared that might happen to me. I could go out of my mind.

"We Sudanese have become different people. Before the war we would have been ashamed to beg. We were proud. We could grow food and look after ourselves. Now we are beggars. I don't like begging but I have no choice."

Why is the world letting it happen?

Asunta told me what it was like to be bombed.

"When the Antonovs come, they don't warn you first. You may be at the river. The children are playing somewhere else. Should I throw myself to the ground? Or should I run to find the children and risk the bombs? The children won't know where I am. They will panic. Will they find safely? Or will they run to find me?

"When you hear the sound of the planes you start shaking. You start behaving like a mad person. Your body can be paralysed with fear. Some people will have diarrhoea. I have stomach pain and afterwards, when I go to the toilet, there is blood there.

"Your hands will shake afterwards. Even men who are proud that they are strong will shake.

"My friend was delivered of a child during the bombing. She clutched the child to her, hoping the bombs wouldn't come their way. But the bombs came. She lost her leg, but the baby was saved.

"I worry about my baby. Each night I ask myself: Will she wake up tomorrow? Why are the Arabs doing this to us? And why is the world letting it happen?"-30-

*Nicholas Kerr, the editor of the Uniting Church in Australia's "New Times" in Adelaide, was a member of the NCCA delegation.

* A selection of pictures by Nicholas Kerr will be on the South Australia Uniting Church synod web page on Monday and can be accessed on http://www.sa.uca.org.au/pages/resources/re_hiddengallery

~~~

Sudan_paride taban (653) ***

Bishop Paride Taban points to an unexploded bomb near the school compound. It is covered with thorns to keep people away.

Bombs nearly killed the bishop

By Nicholas Kerr

Bishop Paride Taban had a narrow escape during a bombing attack on his headquarters in Narus, southern Sudan, last year,

Bishop Taban is president of the Sudan Catholic Bishop's Regional Conference and was founding chairperson of the New Sudan Council of Churches.

"Bombs were dropped here in my compound and at the Bakhita school," he said. "I escaped narrowly. The children were in the bomb shelter. I tried to get there but I was too late.

"I saw the plane coming and I ran but I didn't have time. So I lay down. The pieces of the bomb passed over me and knocked against the wall.

"There were bombs in the school compound. Luckily many of the school children were away on holidays. We didn't have many bomb shelters then. Luckily no children were wounded in that raid, but it damaged the school. In 1998 the clinic was destroyed completely.

"Two of the bombs that have landed have not yet exploded. They are still alive. One is just outside the school compound. The other is just a little further away. After that we put in another eight bomb shelters with some money from London.

"The bomb shelters can take 800 girls. They are in different positions around the school. So the children can study with no problems. When they hear the plane coming they can go under ground. If you build a bomb shelter too big, when there is bombing it may collapse. "

Bishop Taban said everyone knows the sound of the Antonov bombers.

"Once I was on safari in a village. At about 8am I saw a pet monkey and a dog running. I said to the people, 'Why are they running?' They said, 'You wait. You'll soon see the plane arriving.'

"In a little while were heard it. We went to the bomb shelter - and the dog and the monkey were already there in the shelter. They know the sound of the Antonov. The other planes, the animals don't run.

"Many people have been killed. Many people have lost limbs."

Bishop Taban said many of his people are in the Red Cross hospital in Lokichoggio, the world's biggest hospital for victims of war.

"I was there last week," the bishop said. "You have to control your tears because of them. If you weep they will loose hope. It's very sad when you go there. You say to yourself: Why does God not stop this? Why? You ask yourself a lot of questions."

Bishop Taban said the international community seems to have very little interest in what happens in southern Sudan.

"The Arabs want southern Sudan for its wealth and its oil," he said. "They will not let southern Sudan go. We need a miracle really, as God intervened with the Israelites, and said to Pharaoh, 'Let my people go.'

"Our case is not an easy one. We need a miracle. The whole world is afraid. It is as though we have Ebola. People see us and run away. Our problem is contagious. They are more interested in our oil

"Our land is so fertile. It could be cultivated for 50 years without using fertiliser. The North would like to use this as the breadbasket of the Arab world.

"We are the victims. They are willing to sacrifice the southern Sudanese - 12 million people to be sacrificed for this land.

It is a very difficult situation. We have been subjugated from the colonial time to now. We have to ask: Has any black person in Sudan got any rights? Is he not equal to any northerner?

"We want human dignity. We want respect for each person. We want the world to see us as human beings, as equals. But that has never happened in our history.

"Our situation is very grave. But peace is possible. With God, peace is possible. With prayer, peace is possible."

-30-

. Bishop Paride Taban visited Adelaide last December and took part in the public launch of the Christmas Bowl appeal.

~~~

Sudan_slaves (402 + 432 + 116 + 106) ***

Chief Riiny Riiny Lual with some of the elders

Some of the children the chief has brought with him to Kenya

'13,000 taken as slaves'

By Nicholas Kerr

Chief Riiny Riiny Lual, of Marial Baai Payam, Awiel west county, in the northern part of southern Sudan, estimates that about 13,000 of his people have been taken by Arab slave raiders and sold into slavery.

I met him in Kenya. He and his elders had brought a group of children and young people from his area with them. He told me through an interpreter that he was arranging with Sudanese refugee families to take the children.

"I couldn't leave them at home," he said. "They were in danger because of the war and the slave raiders."

Chief Riiny Riiny Luals' area is close to the Arabs of the north. There used to be 80,000 people in his region. Now, he says, there are only about 45,000. Many have been displaced. "They're hiding somewhere in the bush," he said.

"The problem facing my people is that we aren't free. The government of Sudan is not really interested in having us as its people. It's interested in our land. It wants the land without the people.

"It's good grazing land. The Arabs come from desert. Our land is very fertile. They want the land for their cattle. They want it to be the breadbasket of the Arab world.

"Oil has been found in the east of our country, north of Aweil. It is not yet being exploited. They want that, too.

"We in the south must be separated from the north. Only then will we become free. But until this time comes there is nothing good for us.

"This slavery will not stop until we are separated from the north. When south Sudan becomes independent - that will be our freedom. Until that time comes we have no future."

Among the children the chief brought with him to Kenya were five former slaves. They had been redeemed by Christian Solidarity International. Some churches and aid agencies are critical of the program. They say it is promoting slavery rather than fighting it. And some claim some redeemed slaves are being recaptured and sold again.

"I have a boy in my own house," the chief said. "He was once a slave in Northern Sudan. He was redeemed by Christian Solidarity International. They brought him back from slavery. He does not know who his mother are his father are, he was so young when he was taken. All we know was that he was from our area."

A message for Australia

Chief Riiny Riiny Lual has a message for Australian Christians in Australia.

''Let them pray, in the name of our God, for our country and our people in the south. Let them pray that we might get our freedom. Let them pray that God may spare us from the bad things that are happening in our region," he said.

"We ask you to help us, and especially the displaced people who are now returning from the north. Many of them are coming back to the south. When they leave the north they come with nothing, no food, no clothes.

"We have no hospitals, no schools, no sanitation, no good water.

"Some of these people are former slaves who have escaped or been redeemed. Most are people who fled to the north because of the war and the famine and who now want to return.

"They are in camps for displaced people in the north. They are treated very badly there, so they are returning.

"And in the north there is no freedom of religion. There are attempts to convert them to Islam. They are not given any land to cultivate. They are given food only if they agree to become Muslim.

"The Arabs are trying to enslave our souls as well as our bodies."

Chief Riiny Riiny Lual said that, when he was young, Islamic missionaries came to his area.

"They built a mosque and tried to force our people to go and pray there," he said. "The people reacted so strongly against this that they burnt the mosque. It was a symbol of oppression.

"The government was not happy. It sent people to kill us and they took many away. That was when my late father was chief, about 1974. It was before my people became Christians."

Chief Riiny Riiny Lual became a Christian soon after he went to school in 1964. There was a Catholic mission near by.

"Before the war, the Christians were few," he said. "But now almost the entire population of my area are Christians - all except a few who joined Islam a long time ago.

"They are becoming Christians because they are discovering the root cause of the war is religion. There is war because the Arabs are trying to force us to be Muslims.

"We Africans are a very religious people. Before we started going to church we knew who God is.

"Early in the war, the first people who came to our help, in answer to our prayers, were the Christians. In our area now Christmas and Easter are the biggest festivals of all.

'Our hope is in Jesus Christ'

"For our people, our hope is in Jesus Christ," Chief Riiny Riiny Lual said. "That's is why, when our villages are burnt or destroyed, we rebuild the church first. We build it within three or four days.

"Christ died and rose again in three days. We try to rebuild the church in three days. Only when the church is rebuilt do we rebuild the tukals (houses}.

"Jesus Christ died to set God's people free. We are dying to set our people free.

"Our peace will come through Jesus Christ. We build the church before our tukals, because we want the church to be there so we can go to pray to Jesus to save us, that God will send us help."

BOX

Government may sue

News reports last month said the National Islamic Front Government in Khartoum had threatened to sue Mohammed Ushary and Ahmed Imam Baldo, authors of the book "Slavery in Sudan."

And the chair of the Committee for the Eradication of Women and Children Abduction, Ahmed Mufti, said that abduction cases in Sudan had reached 14,000. He said the government had contributed funds for the committee in order to crack down on abductors.

Other commentators reject the term "abduction" which, they say, is a euphemism for slavery.

Some sources say tens of thousands of people have been abducted from southern Sudan and used as slaves in the north.

Telar Deng_1 (1053)

This is genocide

By Nicholas Kerr*

The war in Sudan is genocide, according to Telar Deng, a lawyer who heads the peace and advocacy desk of the New Sudan Council of Churches.

"That's what it's all about - genocide," he said. "Jihad soldiers are told to rape, to loot and to kill - and so it is genocide - clearing people out of an area."

Telar Deng said the war, which has been fought for 19 years, has three dimensions - racial, economic and religious.

"The war in Sudan has a racial dimension in the sense that the north is Arab by race. The south is African by race. The north looks towards the Middle East and we look towards the African world. The north is also Muslim and they look towards the Islamic world. So it has a racial component and religious component.

"It also has an economic component. All the natural resources are in the south. The north wants to get hold of these resources and repopulate the south in order to settle more Arab origin people in the South."

Telar Deng said these three components are sometimes called "triple apartheid".

"Apartheid in South Africa was more obvious," he said. "It was easier for the West to understand.

"In South Africa it was black against white. They didn't differ in religion. They were all Christian. It was based on a racial element, a separation of races, black and white."

Telar Deng said it was impossible to get fully accurate population figures for Sudan. The total population is estimated at 30 million. There are 10 million in the south and 20 million in the north. About six million people from the south are displaced within Sudan and many more are refugees.

"The south has oil, minerals, gold, timber and very fertile land. Three quarters of the two Niles (the Blue Nile and the White Nile) lie in southern Sudan. That complicates our relations with Egypt. Without the Nile, Egypt will not survive. Egypt wants a sympathetic Arab and Islamic nation in Sudan rather than an African one."

In some ways, he said, the Sudan war is not truly a religious one.

"Religion is being misused, as it is in many parts of the Islamic world," he said. "It has become a religious war. The jihad (holy war) soldiers are waging war against the south - and that makes it a religious war."

The south, he said, has been marginalised by the north through history. The resources are in the south - including human resources, the people who are used as slaves.

"One thing that people in the west don't know is that many slaves were taken into the Arab world, as many as were taken into the western world," he said. "But you don't find a black population in the Arab world as you do in the West, in places like the US.

"The slaves who survived the voyages to other parts of the world lived to have children. The African male slaves in the Arab world were killed or castrated.

"That's why people focus their attention on the slave trade in the western world.

"The middle men were, in fact Arabs, who also took slaves. Our contact with the Arab world has been violent for centuries. That adds to the entrenched suspicion by the south. The south feels it can't put down its arms and be one with the north - unless there's a proper agreement that will provide for our security, our own system of government and our own economical survival. The south wants nothing less than self determination."

Telar Deng said the oil being pumped from the south to the north is fuelling the war.

"It's providing Khartoum with the resources, the cash flow, to buy weapons and to pay the soldiers.

"Khartoum used the argument that it would use the oil money to develop the south. We argue that this is impossible in war time. How can they do it? Three quarters or more of south are under the control of the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army).

"The north doesn't have access to areas which are controlled by the SPLA. They didn't develop the south during peace time. It's hypocrisy to claim that they will develop the south during war.

"We're saying, let the oil companies pull out, and let us all work for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. After that the national resources can be exploited for the benefit of all the people."

The oil is also leading to thousands of people, mainly from the Nuer tribe, being displaced. "It's estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 newly displaced people are now moving from the area near the pipeline to Yirol in the south," Telar Deng said.

The north has a scorched earth policy on either side of the pipeline. "The SPLA has damaged the pipeline a number of times, but the flow of oil has not been seriously disrupted," he said. "The pipeline is heavily guarded and there is a team of Canadian engineers who can usually repair it within in day or two.

"The north is clearing the whole area of vegetation as well as of people, so there is no shelter of any kind for the SPLA. There weren't many trees in the Upper

Nile area but there were some. Those trees have been cut down. The grass has been burnt. Villages have been burnt. You can see the devastation for about 50 miles. There is real environmental damage.

"We want the world to be aware of what is happening. We also want the world to know what is happening with slavery. "We want the churches to lobby the international community. Sudan is a signatory of the convention on the abolition of slavery.

"The only solution is a just and lasting peace."

Th Khartoum government denies that there is slavery, but admits that people are being abducted.

"The word 'abduction' is being used to gloss over the reality," Telar Deng said. "What's the difference between abduction and slavery if the abducted person is kept to work or for sexual purposes?

"The slaves are treated as property, not as human beings. If you kill one of your slaves it is not seen as killing a human being. But if I kill one of your slaves, you can bring a civil case against me for destroying your property."

~~~

Telar Deng_1 (360)

The fastest growing church in the world

By Nicholas Kerr*

The church in southern Sudan is believed to be the fastest growing church in the world. Some church leaders say the church in southern Sudan has grown tenfold in the last 10 years.

"I can't confirm that," Rev Dr Haruun Ruun, executive secretary of the New Sudan Council of Churches, said. "We have no official figures. But I wouldn' t contest it, either. It could be right. Certainly the growth of the church has been extraordinary."

Telar Deng, who heads the peace and advocacy desk of the New Sudan Council of Churches, also said the estimate of tenfold growth could be right.

"I would agree with the people who say it has increased tenfold during the 19 years of the war," he said.

"I think the churches have made a mistake in not having an official register of the number of Christians. Of course, that can be difficult in a war situation when so many people are displaced.

"We could safely say that 70 per cent of the population of southern Sudan are now Christian. Ten years ago the percentage would have been considerably less."

The very fact that Christians are being persecuted is causing people to become Christians.

"Our people know that there is a threat - and that it's a religious threat. They believe that the very forces that are threatening Christianity are also threatening their own cultural values. Those values include a great emphasis on religion, on the spiritual.

"One reason why the southern Sudanese embraced Christianity was that it did not conflict with our traditional beliefs and cultures. It was easy for us to embrace it.

"Take circumcision, for example. In some areas of the south people are circumcised, in others they aren't circumcised. Islam requires it. In Christianity there is nothing like that.

"There is the question of genital mutilation of women. Islam requires it. Christianity doesn't.

"Christianity isn't against our traditional culture. Read your bible and you see a lot of similarities between African beliefs and the Old Testament.

"So our people have been able to identify with Christianity. It has not been forced on our people, as the Muslims are trying to do with Islam."